


share each other like an island

by Siria



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: F/F, First Time, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-17
Updated: 2011-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jesus," Danny said, slamming the shot glass back down on the bar. His face creased into a moue of disgust as he scraped at his tongue with his teeth. "Kono, what the hell did I just put in my mouth and was it even legal?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	share each other like an island

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Celli, for the [Hawaii Five-0 Prompt Meme](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/five0_prompts_summer2011/profile), to the prompt "Jenna and Kono, high on post-mission adrenaline, finally resolve their UST." Thanks to Cate and Trin for betaing!

"Jesus," Danny said, slamming the shot glass back down on the bar. His face crinkled up in a moue of disgust as he scraped at his tongue with his teeth. "Kono, what the hell did I just put in my mouth and was it even legal?"

Steve and Chin snickered into their glasses. "You want to say it, or should I?" Chin asked Steve.

"Nah." Steve sipped at his whiskey, eyes crinkling up at the corners. "Too easy. Where's the challenge?"

"I hate you," Danny said. "And I hate you, Chin, and I hate you, Kono, for making me drink this vile... no, seriously, what the hell _was_ that?"

"Half tequila, half Bacardi 151, splash of grenadine," Kono said, grinning at him. She took another pull of her beer. "Just don't go near a naked flame for the next few hours, you'll be fine."

"Yeah, definitely hate you. You," Danny said, gesturing expansively at Jenna with the now empty glass, "you, you're okay, you don't make me drink things that taste like paint stripper or make me jump off roof tops or ride around on motorcycles. I think we'll keep you."

Jenna blinked at him, clearly lost for a response. Kono couldn't blame her—Danny was talkative at the best of times, but add alcohol on top of one hell of a long day, plus the adrenaline of actually catching their target, and Kono was a little surprised he found the time to draw breath. She saw him nod at the bartender for another round and winced; caught Chin's gaze and arched a significant eyebrow at him. "Danny?"

"Yeah?" He was already tipsy enough that his accent had thickened, making him sound more like a parody of a Jersey boy than anything else.

"Don't you have Grace tomorrow evening?" Kono asked.

Chin slid off his bar stool with a sigh.

"Yeah!" Danny said. The expression of uncomplicated happiness on his face looked totally out of place in a dive bar like Frank's—all dark, scarred wood and sticky counter tops, Frank's was where cops and firefighters went to forget the day's events in the bottom of a glass, not to cheer up—which was enough to tell Kono that he really _was_ drunk enough to need someone to take him home.

"Come on, brah," Chin said, picking up his keys and gesturing at the door. "I'll drop you home. You need water and sleep before tomorrow."

"I do," Danny said nodding, full of drunken amiability, "I do, you're right. You're a good man, Chin Ho Kelly, anyone ever tell you that? Steve, tell him he's a good man."

"You're a good man, Chin." The slightly slurred edge of Steve's consonants was the only clue to how much whiskey he'd put away—his hands were still steady; his back still straight—but it was more than enough to make Kono flick another look in Chin's direction. He sighed once more.

"You too, Steve. Come on, time to go."

Kono was almost tempted to follow them outside. She rarely got to see a live comedy show in her line of work, and she wasn't sure how else you could categorise watching her cousin try to coax her two intoxicated, handsy bosses into a truck, the cabin of which was several feet off the ground, but she was comfortable in her seat and had a beer to finish. And then there was Jenna—Jenna, who was sitting opposite her, nursing a small vodka tonic; Jenna, who had a bruise blossoming bright along her right cheekbone; Jenna, who hadn't managed to hold eye contact with Kono all night, but who hadn't left yet.

**********

Kono had made it to headquarters that morning just as the pre-dawn sky was starting to shade into pale grey. She'd cast a regretful look up at it before heading into the building—the offshore wind was solid, thin clouds scudding over the fading face of the moon—knowing that she was passing up the opportunity for good surfing, but with a case like this one, even the six hours she'd snatched to go home, shower, and pass out on semi-clean sheets for a while was arguably a luxury.

Chin and Danny had also gratefully seized the opportunity to get some rest, so most of the building was dark, but Kono wasn't surprised to find Steve sacked out in his office—curled in on himself, long legs flung over the arm of the couch, his boots kicked off as his one concession to comfort. She sighed. She knew from long experience that he was going to have one hell of a crick in his neck when he woke up, which he was going to attempt to cope with in what he _thought_ was a stoic, manly fashion. Time to reheat a batch of the battery acid Chin called coffee and accidentally-on-purpose leave a bottle of ibuprofen out on the counter next to it. And she wasn't even officially Steve's partner—no wonder Danny yelled a lot.

She wasn't much more surprised to find Jenna still there, either. Unlike Steve, Jenna was still awake, though there were dark circles under her eyes and she was surrounded by empty coffee mugs and crumpled cans of energy drinks. She was cross-legged on the floor, stacks of photocopies spread out around her in a crumpled constellation. Her one concession to comfort had been turning on a small fan, carefully angled so as not to disturb the papers, and tugging off her button-down shirt. It lay crumpled on a chair, leaving Jenna wearing the rest of her usual office uniform: cords; a tank top; hipster-nerd glasses and a similar taste in sneakers.

"How're you doing?" Kono asked as she flicked on the coffee machine.

"Fine," Jenna said. "Just wondering what kind of business still hasn't digitised their filing system, that's all." Kono knew enough not to be insulted that Jenna didn't look up from her work as she spoke—this case was personal, after all. Couldn't be anything but, not from the moment they'd stumbled across evidence that said maybe Jenna's fiancée's boss had been on the take from Wo Fat. Still, it made her feel tired just watching Jenna—the tight set of her shoulders, the furrow between her eyebrows that seemed to have become permanent over the past few days. Kono felt like she'd been through too many cases like this over the past eighteen months, lived too long at the intersection of the personal and the painfully public to feel anything other than scraped raw at the sight of another one of her team go through something like this.

"Well," Kono said carefully, sitting down on the floor opposite Jenna with all the caution she'd use around an untamed animal, or Danny the morning after the Yankees lost a game. "At least you seem to have a good system worked out." From somewhere—probably one of the drawers in Chin's desk—Jenna had retrieved a fistful of highlighters in a kaleidoscope of colours. Each of the stacks of paperwork was annotated and scribbled on according to some esoteric, neon system that Kono couldn't even begin to unravel. Frankly, it looked like the Eighties had vomited everywhere.

"If I had a good system worked out," Jenna said tartly, "I'd have figured this out by now." Then she flinched, and sighed, and said, "Sorry, sorry, I just..." She took her glasses off, rubbed at tired eyes with a shaking hand. "I just really need to solve this one, okay?"

"Hey," Kono said. She stretched out one leg, bumped her foot gently against Jenna's until Jenna looked up at her. "It's okay. We get it. I get it." Kono ventured a tentative smile. "And we have a pretty good track record for this kind of stuff, right?"

Jenna gave her a weak but genuine smile in return. "I suppose statistically, the odds are in our favour."

"And if we're really lucky," Kono said, all exaggerated perky cheer, "the boss won't even need any heavy ordnance to get us there." She nudged Jenna's foot again, then stood, saying, "You want some coffee?"

Jenna made a face. "Chin doesn't make it strong enough."

Kono laughed, and went to pour them both a cup while the world slowly woke up around them.

**********

Frank's wasn't the kind of bar to have a cable news network playing twenty four hours a day—in fact, the bulky old TV was wheeled out only for something big, like the Superbowl or ASP World Title events—so Kono had no idea if Five-0's latest bust had made the headlines. She was glad of that. Watching news coverage about her work—even if she was rarely mentioned by name; for a variety of reasons, the anchors liked to focus on Steve—always made Kono uncomfortable. Doubly so, now that the others were gone and Jenna was visibly struggling even harder to pretend that nothing was wrong. Kono wouldn't have been at all surprised to see the glass in Jenna's hand start to fracture and crack, given the white-knuckled grip she had on it.

Kono finished her beer, signalled the bar keeper for another, and then turned her head so that she was looking at Jenna out of the corner of her eye—she could offer Jenna that much gentleness, at least. "So when are we going to talk about it?" The rest of it was going to have to be blunt.

"We're not," Jenna said. She tossed back the last mouthful of her drink—Kono wasn't entirely sure whether to make herself look like more of a badass or so she could hurry up and get out of the bar—but the gesture backfired. The alcohol went down the wrong way, and Jenna coughed and spluttered until Kono took sympathy on her and hit her once on the back, hard.

"Yeah," Kono said, "that wasn't the most convincing way you could have done that."

Jenna rolled her eyes, but Kono could tell her heart wasn't in it. No way that eye roll came close to one of Chin's best. Kono nudged her gently with one elbow, said, "C'mon. I promise if you spill, I'll buy enough alcohol you can forget you ever said anything in the first place, I can honestly tell the boss that we talked about it and he won't have to make that face... you know the one." Kono gestured vaguely with one hand.

Jenna frowned in thought. "The one with the eyebrows?"

"Yup." Kono nodded sagely.

Jenna sighed. "You're probably right. Fine."

**********

By the time Danny and Chin got back, Steve and Jenna were full on yelling at one another in the middle of the room. Kono, leaning against the computer table, was debating whether it was worth getting involved, or if she should just get a spray bottle of water to shock the two of them into silence.

"Uh, cuz?" Chin said out of the side of his mouth. "Should I ask?"

Kono shrugged. She'd decided that maybe she wanted to see how this played out—Jenna hadn't even reached the stage of pulling out her colour-coded evidence charts yet, and Kono sort of wanted to see how Steve would react to that. "Jenna thinks she's found real proof that Kochanowski was dirty—some sort of money trail between him and a shell company set up by Wo Fat."

Chin's eyebrows rose upwards. " _Actual_ evidence?"

Kono shrugged again. "Tentative, but I think it would be admissible." She kept her gaze focused on Jenna, who had her hands on her hips and an angry flush high on her cheekbones. Steve hadn't backed down yet, but neither had Jenna—not, Kono supposed, that she should be surprised. Jenna could be a little awkward sometimes, a little diffident, but put her in a situation where she knew what she was doing, where she was confident in her own skills, and it was like she turned into a whole different person. Kono liked watching that person.

"So what's the problem here, huh?" Danny said, spreading his hands. "We got the evidence, we get the warrant, we go get the guy before he rabbits again."

Kono bit at her lower lip, aimed for an utterly serious expression, because these were the kinds of things that inevitably came up due to the fact that Steve and Jenna were, essentially, the same person. "Maybe you guys should sit down before I tell you."

Chin frowned; Danny made some sort of squawking noise. "What?" Danny said, "Jesus, don't tell me someone gave him a hand grenade again without adult supervision or so help me god—"

Kono shook her head. "No, it's... Steve said he wasn't going to let her go after Kochanowski without backup. Because... because she was too emotionally involved."

Danny and Chin both stared at her for a long moment, slack-jawed, then over at Steve and Jenna, who were still arguing. Neither had apparently noticed Danny and Chin's presence in the room. "I need more coffee," Danny said after a while, his tone strangely even. "I need three whole gallons of coffee."

Kono didn't know if she should laugh or beat her head off the computer desk.

**********

Two vodkas, a carefully nursed bottle of beer later, and several hours later, Frank's was almost empty. The bartender was giving the countertops a half-hearted once over with a filthy-looking rag, and the only light coming in through the windows was the sodium-yellow of the streetlights. Jenna was listing gently to one side, head propped on her hand as she contemplated the dregs of her latest drink. "It's just," she said, consonants so slurred that she sounded more than half asleep, "it's just, okay, so I've got a pretty large vocabalal—voclalab—command of words. I spent four years at Harvard, I did my Master's at Oxford, I analyse words for a living, and the only word I can think of when I think of him is _bastard_. That _bastard_."

Kono very carefully didn't touch her, but she made sure she was in Jenna's line of sight—made sure her hands were curled loosely around her beer bottle where Jenna could see them, where they could remind Jenna that Kono was still there. "I don't know," she said. "Seems like a good word to use in the circumstances."

"Has good syllables," Jenna agreed. Her face hardened suddenly, and when she spoke next, she didn't sound drunk at all. "He was her boss. He was supposed to be looking out for _her_ , and because of him she ended up with a bullet in the back of her head."

"I know," Kono said, and this time she did reach out, the tips of her fingers just brushing against Jenna's elbow.

"I was going to..." Jenna took a deep, shaky breath, like she was trying to take in enough air to fill all the hollow places inside her. "Today, when I saw him, I was going to shoot him. I was so close to just taking that gun and..."

Kono knew that, too.

**********

Probably only the fact that they sent Chin in to request it got them the warrant—the residual aura that came from having been Kukui High School’s golden boy did wonders even in places that had previously been exposed to Steve's fidgety psychoses—but within a few hours Five-0 were on the seventh floor of a downtown office block. Steve went in first, brandishing the warrant in one hand like a banner. It was snatched out of his hand before he'd gone very far by one of the firm's braver lawyers, but the thing was airtight as possible and no one could stop Steve blasting on through like the wrath of God.

Jenna was right behind him, hands balled into fists. Technically, she was there in her role as a consultant—to inspect Sekiya & Feinberg's case files for evidence of electronic tampering and to walk the paper trail back even more solidly to Wo Fat—but given the expression on her face, Kono thought maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to keep one hand in quick reach of her firearm at all times.

At first, Kono went to supervise the paralegals who were retrieving boxes of files from a storage closet, to make sure that no one tried the old 'whoops, I tripped and those papers just happened to fall into the shredder' routine. Steve and Jenna went in search of Anne Sekiya, to see what cover story she was going to give for her firm's activities; Chin made nice with the personal assistants; Danny engaged in what he always referred to as espionage (" _Because it sounds classier than snooping, shut up_.")

Then she heard it: the sound of raised voices and shattering glass. She turned to the paralegal nearest her, snapped "Where?" as she pulled her gun out of its holster. The guy raised his hands up beside his head, like he was afraid Kono was going to shoot him.

The guy raised his hands up beside his head, like he was afraid Kono was going to shoot him. "T-the conference room," he said. "Down the hall, first left."

The conference room was one of those fancy modern architecture things, made to look like a clear glass box suspended in the middle of an open plan office space with very few visible supports—the kind of structure meant to impress both with its avant garde taste and with the obvious fact that it had cost a lot of money. Even though it had to be made of reinforced glass, one of the wall panels was gone—taken out with a gunshot, if Kono had to guess—and another one was threaded with fine cracks like the filaments of a spider's web. As Kono sprinted towards it, she saw several figures inside—Jenna and Steve; some lawyers she didn't recognise, all wearing fancy suits and expressions of bewilderment; and one guy that she did. Kochanowski.

He had a gun in his hand and was using it to gesture at Jenna; Steve was yelling something that Kono couldn't quite make out. Cautiously, she worked her way around to where the side of the conference room was blown out, trying to figure out how she could make it up into the room without leaving herself open to a shot—the room was suspended a good five feet off the ground; an easy vault, but not one that could be made while firing a gun.

She steadied her stance, took a breath. "Drop the gun!" she yelled at Kochanowski. "Drop it, now!"

Kochanowski hadn't risen as high in the CIA as he had without being smart; he didn't break his focus on Steve, recognising that a Navy SEAL in the room was more of a threat than a rookie cop outside of it. Still, he'd forgotten Jenna; he'd forgotten the strength that grief could give, and while he was looking at Steve, Jenna lashed out and got him square in the left kneecap. Even from outside the room, Kono heard something snap. Kochanowski staggered, giving Steve the opening he needed to wrench the gun away from him, but Kochanowski still managed to lash out with one hand and caught Jenna a ringing blow across the face. She snarled at him, and punched him right back in the jaw. By the time Kono leaped up into the room, Kochanowski was lying prone on the floor, Jenna was shaking out the fingers of her right hand, and Steve was looking more than a little impressed.

"Been getting some training in?" he asked Jenna as he none-too-gently hauled Kochanowski to his feet in order to cuff him.

"Nah," Jenna said, sounding out of breath but like she was trying to hide it, "Just, you know. Imagined doing that a lot."

Steve hauled a protesting Kochanowski out of the room, telling him to stop being such a baby when he complained about how his knee was probably broken, leaving Jenna and Kono to be stared at by a couple of dozen shocked lawyers.

"Well," Jenna said, fidgeting a little. She looked halfway between tears and hysterical laughter. Kono couldn't blame her—Kochanowski might not be Wo Fat, but if they could get him to talk, they'd be one step closer to finally getting the guy who'd hurt them all so badly; to getting the guy who'd taken away Jenna's fiancée.

"Yeah," Kono said softly.

**********

"You know," Kono said, "I talked to the paramedics after you left. You really did fracture his kneecap. They think he'll need surgery."

"Huh," Jenna said, after taking the extra moment she likely needed to digest the information, given the amount she'd drunk. "I feel... really, really good about that. I know it's petty and small and I can't even see the moral high ground from here, but knowing that feels really good. I. I just want her to know that I fought for her—I did my best."

Kono clinked her bottle against Jenna's glass.

**********

Kochanowski's arrest had meant the usual: getting a start on the paperwork required by every arrest, weapons discharge, and Steve punching a suspect in the head; someone rummaging through the small fridge back at headquarters looking for an ice pack that could be applied to newly purpling bruises; a pissing match over jurisdiction with the Governor, the DA, the CIA, and half a dozen other acronyms Kono didn't want to devote the brain cells to remembering. It meant Frank's, and Danny getting happily wasted and Steve unwinding just enough to let himself get tipsy; it meant bizarre drinks combinations and silently agreed-on forgetting and Chin being guilted into driving people home.

The only thing that was different was that this time, at the end of the evening, the last two standing were Jenna and Kono. Well, Kono was standing—Jenna swayed a little as she stood, and needed Kono's hand at her elbow to steer her towards the door and out of the bar. The night air was fresh, the strong breeze enough to get the smell of stale alcohol out of Kono's nostrils, and she unlocked her car and helped Jenna inside with the ease that came from forcing many unwilling perps into a HPD patrol car.

"Can we go get pizza?" Jenna said sleepily as Kono slid into her own seat and turned on the engine. "Pizza'd be awesome. Or, like... some cookies. Cookies would be good."

"In a little bit," Kono lied blithely, and turned her car in the direction of Jenna's apartment. She'd signed the lease on her own shoebox-size place because of its proximity to the beach and its views, not because of its guest-hosting potential; there was barely enough room in it for her own bed, and she'd have nowhere to put Jenna. Jenna's place was about as sketchy as Danny's, but since it was further inland it was quite a bit larger. Kono could force Jenna to drink several glasses of water before putting her to bed, and then get a couple of hours' sleep on Jenna's couch before going home to shower.

This late at night, the drive to Jenna's place didn't take long, but Jenna fell asleep long before Kono pulled into her building's parking lot, her head lolling against the window. Kono unfastened her seatbelt, sighing, and leaned over to shake her gently awake. "Jenna? Jenna, c'mon, we're at your place, wake up."

Jenna blinked awake slowly. Vaguely, Kono realised that for once, Jenna wasn't wearing her glasses, and that this was probably the closest they'd ever been to one another. Jenna's eyes were wide and brown, and all of a sudden there was nothing vague about it anymore—Kono was suddenly very aware of how intimate this could look to someone from the outside, how intimate this was, Kono's hand on Jenna's shoulder, the two of them sharing one another's as they breathed and Kono not moving away even though she knew she'd long since broken all the rules that governed personal space, _haole_ or otherwise.

"Um," she said intelligently.

Jenna mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like _oh, screw it_ , and then she leaned forward, closed the last of the space between them by pressing her mouth against Kono's. It wasn't the filthiest kiss Kono had ever received, but it definitely wasn't something that could be brushed off as a chaste expression of thanks for friendship, either—Jenna's mouth opened against hers willingly, Jenna's tongue hot and sharp-edged with alcohol, and Kono felt her breath hiccup in her throat. She was a little too stunned to kiss back at first, too busy mentally rearranging all their interactions these past few months—their standing arrangement to have lunch on Saturdays, terrorists and drug runners and explosions excepted; sitting on the beach the day Jenna's official transfer came through from the CIA, sharing a shaved ice and advice on moving; how Kono hadn't really been that irritated at being told that, because she was a rookie, she was the one who'd have to share her office with Jenna—into something that led here.

Jenna clearly took her surprise as rejection, pulling back and biting at her lower lip. "Whoops," she said, voice sounding strangled, "weird, no idea how that happened! Well, good night."

Kono tightened her grip on Jenna's shoulder, reached around her and pushed down the door lock. "Look," she said, "all I was thinking was that it was kind of sad that Steve McGarrett was maybe not the most emotionally oblivious person on the team after all. If you get out of this car, that'd push the _maybe_ to a _definitely_ and I'd have to go back to Frank's and get properly drunk."

Jenna blinked at her. "I've no idea what that means."

 _Apology note for the boss tomorrow morning_ , Kono thought to herself, rolling her eyes before leaning in to kiss Jenna again. This time was better, Kono shifting so that the angle was easier, moving her hand up to run it through Jenna's short, soft hair. Jenna made a soft sound in the back of her throat and Kono shivered, feeling the first kick of adrenaline in her system—that same, sweet burst she felt when she popped up onto a surfboard or chased down a suspect. When the kiss ended, she said, "I didn't realise, okay? That's what I was trying to say. I was stupid and I didn't realise, but I do now and I'd like to, you know..."

Jenna arched an eyebrow at her. "Be less emotionally oblivious than McGarrett?"

"That," Kono said, and grinned. "I mean, not that that'd be hard."

"Can't argue with your logic," Jenna said. There was quiet in the car for a moment, and then she continued, "You want to come in?"

"I..." Kono squinted at her. "Okay, you know, not to be all... but you had a lot to drink and this was no one's definition of a fun day."

Jenna snorted. "Are you kidding me? Any time Steve gets to manhandle people, he's in heaven."

Kono arched an eyebrow. "Let's leave the statistical outliers out of this, okay? I just don't want to be pushy, especially not if you're—"

Jenna snorted. "Please. I spent four years in Harvard's Poli Sci programme. I can hold my alcohol. Drinking was just easier than remembering some of it tonight, but that doesn't mean I want to stop feeling."

Kono looked at her for a long moment, but in the street light coming in through the car window, Jenna's face was composed and sincere. "Okay," she said, "but only on the condition that you drink at least two large glasses of water before bed—"

Jenna rolled her eyes.

"—and eat a banana. Don't give me that look, you need potassium."

"Chin told you that, didn't he?"

"As if I'd give up my sources."

They got out of the car and climbed the steps to Jenna's second floor apartment. Inside it was cool and dim, the decor comprised mostly of empty cartons of Chinese take out and heavy hardback books. Jenna had to dump what seemed like half her wardrobe off the bed to make it usable, but the mattress was wide and soft, the sheets rumpled and inviting. Kono toed off her shoes, kicked off her jeans, while Jenna was gulping down her water, then wrapped an arm around Jenna's waist and tugged her down to lie beside her. They curled close, kissing idly in the glad anticipation of rest, and when Kono finally fell asleep, it was to the soothing, ticklish sensation of Jenna's fingertips rubbing light circles into the skin of her forearm.

**********

The next morning, Chin, Steve and Danny met for breakfast at a local diner, Danny having persuaded them to try the traditional Jersey hangover cure—grease, lots of it, with additional coffee. Steve was still complaining about it as they walked into the office. "Those eggs were worse than yours, Danno! And who's going to tell Gracie when you have a heart attack, huh?"

"Oh, those eggs were terrible, he says, and yet who asked the waitress for more? You thought I didn't hear that, huh? Because believe me, Steven, there's nothing that I don't... uh. Steve, why do you have flowers on your desk?"

A large glass vase was sitting in the middle of Steve's normally far-too-orderly desk, overflowing with bright yellow hibiscus flowers. The three approached it cautiously—it wasn't like they'd ever heard of a bomb being concealed inside a vase of flowers, but all things considered, none of them were going to rule it out. "Huh," Chin said, locating the small card nestled in amongst the blooms and plucking it out. "Looks like Kono's handwriting."

"Jesus," Danny said, "is this some sick fuck's way of telling us she's been kidnapped? Because—"

Chin shook his head, arching an eyebrow as he took in Kono's looping scroll. "Nope. It just says _Sorry for underestimating you, boss. Thanks for providing the role model! Taking the day off, see you Thursday_." He and Danny both turned to stare at Steve, who looked more than a little dumbfounded.

"I swear, I have no idea!" Steve said, holding up both hands in surrender. "Not a clue."

"Hey," Chin said, "if I knew what this was about, I'd probably have to punch you. But since I don't..." His shrug was elegant, nonchalant punctuation.

"That's reassuring," Steve said, then peered at the flowers once more, a look on his face as if they really might be fashioned from plastique. "I just... you think she's planning something?"

"Please," Danny said, "It's Kono. We're just lucky she prefers surfing to starting coups."

**********

"Okay," Jenna said. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. Probably just over-tired. Yeah, I'll be in to finish up the paperwork tomorrow sometime. Huh? Oh, no. No, I have no idea. Yeah, that does sound a little weird, but... Steve thinks what? Uh. I'm pretty sure not, that's—yeah. See you tomorrow, Danny. Bye." She tossed her phone back onto the bedside table, then rolled back over to face Kono. "He said I could take another day if I wanted, but I said I was fine."

"You do need your rest," Kono said, mock solemn.

"Yup," Jenna said, fingertips skirting along the hem of Kono's tank top, smile playing on her face.

"So," Kono said, stretching, "what's Steve up to?"

"Eh," Jenna said, "Danny says he's freaking out a little about the flowers, wondering if you're planning some kind of world domination thing."

Kono wrinkled her nose. "Not on a _Thursday_. But as for what else I could be planning..." She trailed off significantly, waggling her eyebrows.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jenna said, pretending to frown, but she went willingly when Kono nudged her onto her back, tilted her head back for Kono's kisses.

"I love it when a plan comes together," Kono grinned, and then Jenna was laughing, and they were kissing some more and it was all good and easy, simple, the best way of saying _yes_.


End file.
